If you needed any proof that Sonic the Hedgehog was SEGA’s biggest franchise, then maybe this recent report will confirm it. A calculation of SEGA’s third-party game sales were made for the year of 2002, and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on Gamecube is currently the top-selling game of all of SEGA’s products.
The report comes from IGN, who says they put together the below chart as a “simplified analysis of industry data from different angles.” As you can see, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle racked up 465,000 copies in the US for the year through August 2002 – although other Gamecube SEGA titles do not seem to have been as successful.
In fact, besides NBA 2K2 and Virtua Fighter 4 on PlayStation 2, not an awful lot of SEGA’s third-party games have managed to sell much in the US market. Besides sports titles, notable titles seem to be Super Monkey Ball (Gamecube), Jet Set Radio (Xbox) and Gun Valkyrie (Xbox), but none seem to be close to Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.
But still, good news for Sonic Team and Sonic, right? The chart above doesn’t include Game Boy Advance games though, it seems, so we have no idea where Sonic Advance might sit on this chart.